The Road Goes Ever On
by SableDreamer
Summary: Following a terrible nightmare, Kagome is forced to question if there really is a happy ending to her feudal fairytale. Will she be able to confront her fears and delve into the dark recesses of her own mind? Will that journey end in despair or in hope?


Hello all, and welcome to my second story here. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha and am making no profit from writing this story. I also do not own the Lord of the Rings or the song from it that the title of this work is based on.

The Road Goes Ever On

Overture

She dreamt of blood. Blood was everywhere, on everything. Blood made the ground a sopping mess. It dripped from the trees to splatter on her upturned face. She shuddered at the sticky substance slowly running down her cheeks like a mockery of her tears. Around her in the many grisly forms of death, lay her friends, her comrades, her family. Sango lay, curled protectively around her brother, her back an open bleeding wound and a gaping hole in her spine. Kohaku's empty eyes haunted her, as they stared accusingly at her in death. Why hadn't she saved him? Why hadn't she saved his sister? Swallowing past the lump in her throat, her horror-widened brown eyes flicked to another bloody tableau of death.

Here a monk lay, hand still outstretched to pull their enemies into the void. His skin was pale, mottled with sickly yellows and greens from the poison of the insects he had drawn in. Like Kohaku, Miroku's eyes were open, and in their dark depths the shadow of pain unimaginable still lurked. Not too far away, Kirara lay, bloody and broken, the shattered bones of her legs piercing her flesh. Almost unseen beneath the cat's large form was a tuft of red fur.

With painstakingly slow steps, she picked her way between the dead, and knelt, heedless of the blood now soaking her legs. A little kistune lay, his clothes and fur matted with drying blood from his slit neck. The sticky tears poured faster and pale hands reached their shaking way to the child. She drew Shippou to her chest, crooning the soft lullaby she sometimes used to sing him to sleep when the nightmares of life became too much for his young heart and mind. As she sang, her gaze wandered, and halted on a splash of silvered white in the sea of red. Her lullaby stilled on her lips, and a cold blankness, filled with static, settled over her heart. It couldn't be. She would not believe it. With loving gentleness, she set her kit down and rose, moving swiftly, uncaringly, through the carnage of battle until she halted by that single pool of moonlight in a sky of blood.

He lay face down in the mud created from the combination of dirt and spilled blood, the flesh of his back torn and as red as his haori. In his hand, the tattered grip of Tessaiga still rested. Slowly, with the cautious, careful grip of one frightened of harming the injured and afraid of what she might find, she rolled the hanyou onto his shredded back. A bloodied hand flew to her lips in a vain attempt to hold back a disbelieving gasp of horror and sorrow. Golden eyes, once so full and vibrant with life were dulled with the glaze of death, and, now visible, a void where his heart should have been. From that blank space inside her, a terrible keening cry rose and spilled from her mouth. She screamed her terror, her pain, her despair to the uncaring heavens even as darkness ate her vision and her mouth seemed to fill with the metallic liquid of life, so that she drowned in blood. A dark, cruel laugh followed her into oblivion, and a voice made of the shadows mocked her, "Despair, Miko, despair and lose all that you hold dear. You were never of this world, a woman from the future who lives in the past, but is part of neither."

Kagome woke from her sleep screaming, the taste of blood still on her lips, tears falling down her cheeks unchecked, and sinister laughter like black velvet echoing in her ears.

Before everyone gets out their torches and pitchforks to hunt me down for slaughtering the characters, let me make something clear: It was all a dream! That's right, a dream. Not a sequence that Kagome thought was a dream that turns out to be real, but an actual dream. With that said, I would like to warn everyone here and now that this will be a dark fic. This story will focus on Kagome's inner turmoil as she questions the relationship between herself, the well, and the Shikon and what that relationship might mean once the all important wish is made. Be prepared for some dark, angsty thoughts on her part. However, I don't believe in torturing everyone with gloom and doom all the time, so you can expect some lighter moments in this piece alongside the dark. Please read and review!

~SableDreamer


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